FIRED UP - (DVD REVIEW)
SEARCH:
fired,up,movie,review,cheerleader,panthers,cheer,twilight
Director: Will Gluck
Cast: Nicholas DAgosto, Eric Christian Olsen, Molly Sims, John Michael Higgins
Rating: ***
In the tradition of Bring It On and High School Musical comes a cheerleader movie with an edge. It is not just about taking the title of Best Cheer home from the championships. It is about getting to the finals in the first place.
That may be easy when you are a young fit girl with a smile as wide as your splits, but when yore on the football team team and want to get out of training to go to cheer camp its a whole other ball game.
Shawn and Nick are our chiseled cheese ball jocks who are looking to score with the ladies rather than on the point line.They are enticed by the amazing odds that 300 cheerleaders will bring in terms of conquests and concoct an elaborate plan to follow through with the play, but somewhere along the way, they drop the ball and fumble their way into the love for cheering.
The film has many holes. The cast is beautiful for a reason. There is no substance here just cheap gloss and preppy perky people smiling clapping and high kicking their way through each scene. The love story is cute and the love triangle between Shawn and the head cheerleader and her boyfriend is entertaining but nothing new.
Director Will Gluck has a lot of visual merchandise to work with here and his formulaic direction is nothing spectacular. This is his debut feature and it shows.
Casting is a little off, our two lead males are both older than 25 and they look out of place in the college scene. That may be a conscious decision however if so this reviewer believes it failed on this occasion. Some laughs are had in the bit parts of the bunk mate of Nick and Shawn, and the uber jock boyfriend of the head cheerleader. One stand out is Coach Keith (Yes Man) who is head coach is Cheer Camp.
The film features a scene that throws back to the aforementioned Bring It On paying homage to the genre though frankly it feels like a reminder of a movie that will forever cast a chiffon shadow over this one.
Fired Up is nothing to get majorly excited over, however if you enjoy the frat-genre which is nowhere on par with another name-check movie Animal House, you will get a few good laughs and a couple of awesome cheers out of this one.
